Introduction

Dear Streethunters.net Readers,

3 years ago, we wrote a blog post called 25 Inspirational Ladies of Street Photography. A lot has changed in the street photography scene since then, so we feel it’s time for a new, updated, larger list dedicated to women street photographers.

In an attempt to promote more active women street photographers, (i.e. photographers who actually take street photos during the time of writing) Streethunters.net explored the web in search of ladies who like shooting in the streets and share some, most, or all of their street photos online. Not all of them are strictly street photographers. Some of them shoot street on their spare time, others even less than that, but all of them have photos worth sharing and that is why they ended up on this list.

Before we present you with a roll call of these ladies, we kindly ask you to send in any names of female street photographers you know and would like to see in this list. But that is enough for an introduction, let’s go and meet the women street photographers you should follow on the web.

Introduction

Not so long ago Street Photography wasn’t as known as it is today. I remember when I used to tell my friends back in 2012 that my hobby is shooting street, they had no idea what I was talking about! And, when I explained, they thought it was weird and pervy. But things have changed since then. Things have changed a lot.

Thanks to the passion of a few individuals such as Eric Kim, Blake Andrews and Yanidel to name a few that constantly kept sharing their ideas and experiences about Street Photography through their blogs, the genre has now reached a new level of recognition.

NOTE: This is a Guest Blog post written by Hamish Gill from 35mmc exclusively for www.streethunters.net.

Street photography – at least as I think it’s commonly understood – is something I wouldn’t ever say I aspire toward. For a start, I’m not sure I really know what street photography is! It’s such a broad term that seems to get applied to such a vast array of different sub-fields of photography that it’s quite hard to put a finger on.

To my mind, what most people – or at very least the layman – think of when they hear the term street photography is probably closer to the output of the likes of Bruce Gilden. But of course this isn’t really that accurate. The broader field of street photography seems to have laid claim to all sorts of sub-fields of photography. Take Fan Ho for example. I’ve repeatedly read of Fan Ho being classified as ‘street’, but look at his most famous works, and then compare them to Gilden’s. Unless you’re some sort of history of art type with a masters in bullshit, you’re probably going to find it quite hard to find much parity. Both shot/shoot a lot of black & white, both are highly regarded within their respective sub-fields of street photography, yet in pretty much every way they are different in terms of style and output. Gilden is brash and heavy handed, whereas Ho was contemplative, and produced work that feels gentle and light in its touch.

Not only is the field of street photography broad, but also – perhaps because of so many of the greats being easy to classify as such – it’s a very difficult field to find solid a footing within, never mind master. It’s gotta be incredibly difficult to do anything that stands proud amongst so much incredible work. In fact, the moment you classify yourself as a “street photographer” you’re automatically classifying yourself amongst such a vast sea of greatness, where do you even start to attempt to make a mark?

Introduction

Flash Street Photography is a sub genre of Street Photography that is basically shooting photos in the streets using a flash for additional light. The flash can be used for dramatic effect, for filling in shadowy areas or in other creative ways and the results of this practice are usually unusual and impressive.

In the past we have featured various Flash Street Photographers in our Featured Street Photo and Under The Influence series, however we have never compiled a list of Flash Street Photographers for you to go through in one go. Today we are doing just that and we will be sharing with you links towards their websites and social profiles so you can always stay up to date with the excellent work that they produce.

Before we dive into the list of talented Flash Street Photographers we would like to remind you of our very own Flash Street Photography workshops that take place in Athens. The next workshop is on the 29th of April 2017. We will be having more Flash Street Photography workshops in the near future. If you are interested in joining us in the 3rd Annual Street Hunters Meeting in London this August, we will be teaching a Flash Street Photography workshop there too. Make sure to stay tuned and check out our Workshops sections every so often.

You Recommended And You Voted

A week ago, we asked you dear Readers to do one more thing for us and that was to vote for your most influential Street Photographer out of the list of 124. You responded by voting 14,495 times! If you have been following this series of Influential Street Photographers you will notice that the votes are a lot less. Well, this time we added an IP restriction in order to avoid multiple votes from the same sources. We hope it worked!

Thank you!

It is understandable that each one of you is influenced by different Street Photographers for different reasons and that is what makes this vote even more interesting. Influences play an important role in the way an artist perceives the world and his/her art, so it is only logical that each one of us has different sources of inspiration, making our perception of what we consider “an influence” unique. What is important is that you all helped us with your vote to find who are the 20 most influential Street Photographers at this time according to you.

So here they are in the order you voted for them, starting with the Street Photographer that got the most votes:

I have been dreading this day. You have probably noticed that we three Streethunters editors take it in turns to write a ‘big’ article every week. We call them feature posts, and it’s a chance for us to wax lyrical about anything street photography we like. Andrew will often put out an awesome book review or a comprehensive under the influence analysis of some cracking street photographer, and Spyros will review some street photography gear, launch a new street hunt video, or debrief about the latest street photography jaunt he’s been on. Well, this week was my turn, and I had nothing. Zilch. Nada. I was utterly bereft of ideas of what to write about. I’ve had some things going on over the last few weeks which has meant that street photography has had to take a bit of a back seat. Without being able to get out and about with my camera I’ve been a bit stuck for inspiration. So I started to look through some of the old articles on the streethunters.net website. And I hit a goldmine. Both Andrew and Spyros have picked the 10 reasons why they love street photography, but since I’ve joined the team I haven’t got round to it. And what better way to rekindle my passion and get myself back in the groove than remind myself why street photography is so awesome in the first place? So, strap in for the 10 reasons why I love street photography!

Already many of you have been emailing us, asking for connections in various cities. As mentioned in the previous post by Digby, to make things faster and easier for you, we said we would make a list of names that you can easily browse through.

So today we are presenting you with the very first version of the Streethunters Local Guides list. We are pretty sure that new names will be added here as more and more people find out about it. It is a very helpful list that will prove useful to all you traveling Street Hunters!

One more thing. You might find that some names are in more than one cities. That is because some of you have volunteered for more than one location.

Back in May we began our annual search for the most influential street photographers of the year, asking you, our readers, to submit names and ultimately vote to decide the 20 Most Influential Street Photographers for 2016 according to the Streethunters.net Readers. As is often the case with our ‘most influential street photographers’ search, our poll generated a fair amount of controversy. Some of it was warranted, and some of it was down to people not fully understanding the nature of the poll. We learn something from the feedback from the posts each year, so this year we decided to write a ‘debrief’ of sorts to help understand and interpret the polls, and to show that we take our feedback very seriously. So read on for the Street Hunters debrief of the results of the 20 Most Influential Street Photographers of 2016!

You Recommended And You Voted

A week ago, we asked you dear Readers to do one more thing for us and that was to vote for your most influential Street Photographer out of the list of 115. You voted 20,357 times!

Thank you!

It is understandable that each one of you is influenced by different Street Photographers for different reasons and that is what makes this vote even more interesting. Influences play an important role in the way an artist perceives the world and his/her art, so it is only logical that each one of us has different sources of inspiration, making our perception of what we consider “an influence” unique. What is important is that you all helped us with your vote to find who are the 20 most influential Street Photographers at this time according to you.

One of the Street Photographers on this list, Thomas Leuthard, explained this nicely in his post when he shared the link to the poll on his facebook page. He said:

“Make your personal suggestion, who is the most influential street photographer for you. Not the best, not the most famous, not the coolest, the one who influences you…”

The numbers from last year

So, last year we all nominated together 75 Street Photographers. Then you voted 21,137 times and from those 21,137 votes, 20 names stood out. These names got into the first ever crowdsourced list of Street Photographers. A list that you made and that has been viewed more than 76645 times (at the time of writing this).

Let’s do this again!

So, this year we invite you all to do this again! Things have changed in the Street Photography scene. There are new names that are being mentioned all the time on the Social Networks, there are others out there that are trying hard to make a difference, influencing people around them. More and more Street Photographers are publishing books, filming short documentaries about Street Photography, being interviewed, winning awards and more. The list of names is ever changing and keeps on getting more and more interesting. So, since things are always evolving and ever changing we ask you once again to make your suggestions by sharing your favourites with us!

You make suggestions and share your favourites with us

Just like last year, we the Editorial team, have already made a list of names of 21 Street Photographers that we think are the most influential for 2016. We want you to add to this list by posting as many names of Influential Street Photographers as you like in the comments. You can post 1 name or 50 names. All names will be added to a poll and then we will all vote on them.

ATTENTION: These names will be filtered by us, we will not accept names of Street Photographers that aren’t truly influential.

So for example if you have been a Street Photographer for the last 6 months and you want exposure and you think you can add your name to this list, think again. We want you to suggest true, influential Street Photographers. We will accept suggestions for a week, until next Wednesday evening. Then, we will take those suggestions and have a poll for another week. When the votes are in, we will know who the “The 20 most Influential Street Photographers for 2016” are.

The names Street Hunters recommend

Here are the 21 names of Street Photographers that we recommend in random order. We gave ourselves a limit of 7 names each so we wouldn’t get too carried away:

Elliott Erwitt

Mark Cohen

Ed Templeton

Josef Koudelka

Stacy Kranitz

Tatsuo Suzuki

Daido Moriyama

Eric Kim

Gabi Ben Avraham

Boris the Flash

Alex Webb

David Alan Harvey

Martin Parr

Bruce Davidson

Valerie Jardin

Dirty Harry

Bruce Gilden

Boogie

Pau Ll. Buscató

Tavepong Pratoomwong

Narelle Autio

Each of the above Street Photographers are influential in their own right. For one reason or another. Somehow they have shaped the wider Street Photography community and are continuing to do so. We look forward to receiving your suggestions.

So, come on! Send in the names of the Street Photographers that you think are the most influential for 2016!

ATTENTION: If you can’t comment on our website for some reason, try a Social Network login to comment. If again you can’t comment, just visit our Facebook Page and share your suggestion in the comments of the post there.